The Courts of the Morning E-Book

John Buchan

• Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

One of John Buchan's most famous characters, Sandy Arbuthnot is the hero of this story of adventure in a far flung country. Sandy must battle against a charismatic industrial tycoon who wants to take over the world.

Leseprobe

The Courts of the Morning

by John Buchan

First published in 1929

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

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The Courts of the Morning

by

John Buchan

I

This story begins, so far as I am concerned, in the August of 192–, when I had for the second time a lease of the forest of Machray. Mary and Peter John and the household had gone north at the end of July, but I was detained for ten days in London over the business of a Rhodesian land company, of which I had recently become chairman. I was putting up at my club, and one morning I was rung up by Ellery Willis of the American Embassy, who had been wiring about me all over the country. He seemed to be in a hurry to see me, so I asked him to luncheon.

I had known Willis in the War, when he had had a field battery with the American 2nd Corps. After that he had been on the Headquarters Staff at Washington, and was now a military attache at the London Embassy. He seemed to have a good many duties besides the study of military affairs, and when I met him he was always discoursing about world politics and the need of England and America getting close to each other. I agreed with him about that, but used to tell him that the best way was not to talk too much, but to send Englishmen and Americans fishing together. He was an ardent, rather solemn young man, but with a quick sense of humour, and Mary said he was the best dancer in London.

He cut at once into business.

"You are a friend of Mr Blenkiron's—John S. Blenkiron," he said. "I want to know if you have heard from him lately?"

"Not for months," I said. "Blenkiron was never a regular correspondent, and the fount has dried up since last December."

He looked grave. "That's bad," he said.

"There's nothing wrong?" I asked anxiously.

"Only that nobody knows what has become of him."

"But that was always the old ruffian's way. He likes to cover his tracks, like Providence, and turn up suddenly when he is not expected. There's a lot of the child in him."

Willis shook his head. "I expect there's more to it this time than that. I'll tell you what we know. He made a dive back into Wall Street last fall, and did some big things in electrolytic zinc. Then he went to Santa Catalina, and returned to New York in the second week of January. On the 27th day of that month he sailed for Panama in a fruit–steamer, having previously shut up his office and wound up his affairs as if he were thinking of his decease. From that day no one has clapped eyes on him. He has nothing in the way of family life, but I needn't tell you that he has plenty of friends, and they are beginning to get anxious. All that we can find out is that last March a little Jew man turned up in New York with an order from Mr Blenkiron for a quarter of a million dollars. It was all right, and the money was handed over, and the shape it took was a draft on Valparaiso to be paid after countersignature by our consul there. We got in touch with the consul, and heard that the money had been collected on Mr Blenkiron's instructions by some fellow with a Spanish name."

"That sounds queer," I said.

"It certainly does. But there's something queerer still. In June Mr Neston of the Treasury got a letter—he had been a business associate of Mr Blenkiron's at one time and they used to go bass–fishing in Minnesota. It didn't come by mail, but was handed in one evening at Mr Neston's private residence. It bore no name, but there could be no doubt it was from Mr Blenkiron. I have seen a copy of it with Mr Neston's commentary, and I can tell you it was great stuff. The writer warned his old friend that there might be trouble brewing in certain parts of the world which he did not specify, and he begged him, as he was a good American, to keep his eyes skinned. He also said that he, the writer, might have to ask some day soon for help, and that he counted on getting it. The funny thing was that the letter was in a kind of cypher. I understand that Mr Blenkiron used to write to his friends in a high–coloured version of our national slang, and that he had a good many private expressions that were Choctaw to those that did not know him. That letter might have been read as the perfectly natural expression of a light–headed American, who had been having too many cocktails and was writing drivel about his health and his habits and the fine weather. But, knowing how to construe it, it made Mr Neston sit up and take notice…There was another thing.

"I have said that the letter had no name, but it was signed all the same. It seems that in any very important and intimate communication Mr Blenkiron used to make a hieroglyphic of his surname and stick J. S. after it in brackets. That was meant to be a kind of S.O.S. to his friends that the thing was mighty important. Well, this letter had the hieroglyphic in three places, scrawled in as if the writer had been playing absent–mindedly with his pen. Mr Neston's conclusion was that Mr Blenkiron had written it in some place where he was not allowed to communicate freely, and might be in considerable danger."

I admitted that it looked like it, and said that if Blenkiron had been captured by bandits and held up to ransom, I could vouch for it, from what I knew of him, that his captors had done the worst day's work of their lives. I asked what his Government was doing about it.

"Nothing official," said Willis, "for we are in this difficulty. We are afraid of spoiling Mr Blenkiron's game, whatever it may be. Washington has a very high respect for his talents, and we should hate to cross him by being officious. All the same, we are anxious, and that is why I have come to you."

He proceeded to give me one of his lectures on international affairs. America, by his way of it, was in a delicate position, in spite of being rich enough to buy up the globe. She was trying to set her house in order, and it was a large–sized job, owing to the melting–pot not properly melting but leaving chunks of undigested matter. That was the real reason why she could not take a big hand in world–affairs—the League of Nations and so forth; she had too much to do at home, and wanted all her energies for it.

That was the reason, too, why she was so set on prohibition of all kinds—drink, drugs, and aliens. But her hand might be forced, if anything went wrong in the American continent itself, because of her Monroe Doctrine. She didn't want any foreign complications at the moment. They would be very awkward for her, and possibly very dangerous, and she would resolutely keep out of them, unless they occurred, so to speak, opposite her front yard, in which case she would be bound to intervene. Therefore, if anyone wanted to do her the worst kind of turn, he would stir up trouble in some place like South America. Willis believed that Blenkiron had got on the track of something of the kind, and was trying to warn her.

That sounded reasonable enough, but what was not reasonable was Willis's straight request that I should put on my boots and go and look for him. "We can't do anything officially," he repeated. "An American would be suspected where an Englishman would get through. Besides, I believe you are his closest friend."

Of course I at once disabused him of that notion. I knew old Blenkiron too well to be nervous about him; he could no more be badly lost than Ulysses. I saw Willis's point about American politics, but they were no concern of mine. I told him in so many words that my travelling days were over, that I was a landowner and a married man and the father of a son, with all sorts of prior duties. But he was so downcast at my refusal, and so earnest that something should be done, that I promised to put the matter before Sandy Arbuthnot. I proposed in any case to go to Laverlaw for a couple of days on my way to Machray.

II

Laverlaw is a very good imitation of the end of the world. You alight at a wayside station in a Border valley, and drive for eight miles up a tributary glen between high green hills; then, when the stream has grown small and you think that the glen must stop, it suddenly opens into an upland paradise—an amphitheatre of turf and woodland which is the park and in the heart of it an old stone castle. The keep was once a peel–tower, famous in a hundred ballads, and the house which had grown round dated mostly from the sixteen century. I had never been there before, for the old Lord Clanroyden had lived sick and solitary for years, and Sandy had only succeeded in the previous February. When arrived in the early gloaming, with that green cup swimming in amber light and the bell–heather on the high ground smouldering in the sunset, I had to rub my eyes to make sure that the place was not a dream. I thought it the right kind of home for Sandy, a fairy–tale fortress lying secret in the hills from which he could descend to colour the prose of the world.

Sandy met me at the gates and made me get out of the car and walk the rest of the way with him. In his shocking old tweeds, with his lithe figure, his girlish colouring, and his steady, glowing eyes, he fitted well into the fantastic landscape. You could see that he was glad have me there, and he made me welcome with all his old warmth, but in the half–mile walk I felt a subtle change him. His talk didn't bubble over as it used to, and I had feeling that he was rather making conversation. I wonder if being a peer and a landowner and that sort of thing had sobered him, but I promptly dismissed the idea. I wasn't prepared to believe that external circumstances could have any effect on one who had about as much worldliness as fakir with his begging–bowl.

All the same there was a change, and I was conscious it during the evening. Archie Roylance and his young wife were staying there—like me, for the first time. I am prepared to rank Janet Roylance second only to Mary as the prettiest and most delightful thing in the world, and I knew that she and Sandy were close friends. In the daytime she was always, so to speak, booted and spurred, and seemed have the alertness and vigour of an active boy; in the evening she used to become the daintiest lit porcelain lady; and those who saw Janet as a Dresden shepherdess in a drawing–room would scarcely believe that it was the same person who that morning had been scampering over the heather. She was in tremendous spirits, and Archie is a cheerful soul, but they found it heavy going with Sandy.

We dined in what had been the hall of the thirteenth–century keep–stone walls, a fireplace like a cave, and Jacobean rafters and panelling. Sandy wore the green coat of some Border club, and sat like a solemn sprite in the great chair at the head of his table, while Janet tried to keep the talk going from the other end. The ancient candelabra, which gave a dim religious light, and the long lines of mailed or periwigged Arbuthnots on the wall made the place too heavy a setting for one whom I had always known as a dweller in tents. I felt somehow as if the old Sandy were being shackled and stifled by this feudal magnificence.

The Roylances, having been married in the winter, had postponed their honeymoon, and Janet was full of plans for bringing it off that autumn. She rather fancied the East. Sandy was discouraging. The East, he said, was simply dusty bric–a–brac, for the spirit had gone out of it, and there were no mysteries left, only half–baked Occidentalism. "Go to Samarkand, and you will get the chatter of Bloomsbury intellectuals. I expect in Lhasa they are discussing Freud."

I suggested South Africa, or a trip up through the Lakes to the Nile. Janet vetoed this, because of Archie's stiff leg; she thought big–game hunting would be bad for him, and she considered with justice that if he were in the neighbourhood of wild beasts he would go after them.

Archie himself was inclined to South America. He said he had always had a romance about that part of the world, and he understood that it was the only place which still held some geographical secrets. Also it appeared that, though a poor linguist, he could talk a sort of Spanish, owing to having spent some time in the Madrid Embassy.

"I've never been there," said Sandy, "and I never want to go. It's too big and badly put together, like a child's mud castle. There's cannibal fish, and every kind of noxious insect, and it's the happy home of poisons, and the people of the future will be concerned with the New World. It might be rather useful to me in politics if I went and had a look round."

Sandy laughed. "Better go to the States. That's the power–house where you press the button."

This gave me the chance to talk about Blenkiron, and I told them what I had heard from Ellery Willis. Archie, who had only seen Blenkiron in the last year of the War, was rather excited; Sandy, who knew him intimately, was apathetic.

"He'll turn up all right. Trust John S. You can't mislay a battered warrior like that. You'd better tell Willis that he is doing a very poor service to Blenkiron by starting a hue–and–cry. The old man won't like it a bit."

"But, I assure you, Willis is very much in earnest. He wanted me to start out right away on a secret expedition, and to quiet him I promised to speak to you."

"Well, you've spoken," said Sandy, "and you can tell him I think it moonshine. Blenkiron will come back to his friends when his job is done, whatever it may be…Unless Archie likes to take the thing on?"

He seemed to want to drop the subject, but Janet broke in: "I always understood that Mr Blenkiron had no relations except the nephew who was killed in the War. But I met a girl last month who was a niece or a cousin of his. She told me she had been staying in the Borders and had been taken to see you at Laverlaw."

Sandy looked up, and I could have sworn that a shade of anxiety passed over his face.

"Her name was Dasent," Janet went on. "I can't remember her Christian name."

"Probably Irene—pronounced Ireen," said Sandy. "I remember her. She came over with the Manorwaters. She seemed to have got a little mixed about Scotland, for she wanted to know why I wasn't wearing a kilt, and I told her because I was neither a Highlander nor a Cockney stock–broker." He spoke sharply, as if the visit had left an unpleasant memory.

"I should like to meet a niece of Blenkiron's," I said "Tell me more about her."

In reply Sandy made a few comments on American young women which were not flattering. I could see what had happened—Sandy at a loose end and a little choked by his new life, and a brisk and ignorant lady who wanted to enthuse about it. They had met "head on," as Americans say.

"You didn't like her?" I asked.

"I didn't think enough about her to dislike her. Ask Janet."

"I only saw her for about an hour," said that lady. "She came to stay with Junius and Agatha at Strathlarrig just when I was leaving. I think I rather liked her. She was from South Carolina, and had a nice, soft, slurring voice. So far as I remember she talked very little. She looked delicious, too–tallish and slim and rather dark, with deep eyes that said all sorts of wonderful things. You must be as blind as a bat, Sandy, if you didn't see that."

"I am. I don't boast of it—indeed I'm rather ashamed of it—but I'm horribly unsusceptible. Once—long ago—when I was at Oxford, I was staying in the West Highlands, and in the evening we sat in a room which looked over the sea into the sunset, and a girl sang old songs. I don't remember whether she was pretty or not—I don't remember her name—but I remember that her singing made me want to fall in love…Since I grew up I've had no time."

Janet was shocked. "But, Sandy dear, you must marry."

He shook his head. "Never! I should make a rotten husband. Besides, Dick and Archie have carried off the only two women I love."

After that he seemed to cheer up. I remember that he took to telling stories of poisons—I suppose the mention of South America set him off on that. He showed us a box with three tiny pellets in it, things which looked like discoloured pearls, and which he said were the most mysterious narcotics in the world, and one of the deadliest poisons. They reminded me of pills I once got from an old Portugee prospector, which I carried about with me for years but never touched, pills to be used if you were lost in the bush, for one was said to put you into a forty–hours sleep and two gave a painless death. Sandy would explain nothing further about them, and locked them away.

What with one thing and another we had rather a jolly evening. But next morning, when the Roylances had gone, I had the same impression of some subtle change. This new Sandy was not the one I had known. We went for a long tramp on the hills, with sandwiches in our pockets, for neither of us seemed inclined to shoulder a gun. It was a crisp morning with a slight frost, and before midday it had become one of those blazing August days when there is not a breath of wind and the heather smells as hot as tamarisks.

We climbed the Lammer Law and did about twenty miles of a circuit along the hill–tops. It was excellent training for Machray, and I would have enjoyed myself had it not been for Sandy.

He talked a great deal and it was all in one strain, and—for a marvel—all about himself. The gist of it was that he was as one born out of due season, and mighty discontented with his lot.

"I can't grow old decently," he said. "Here am I—over forty—and I haven't matured one bit since I left Oxford. I don't want to do the things befitting my age and position. I suppose I ought to be ambitious—make speeches in the House of Lords—become an expert on some rotten subject—take the chair at public dinners—row my weight in the silly old boat—and end by governing some distant Dominion."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because I don't want to. I'd rather eat cold mutton in a cabman's shelter, as Lamancha once observed about political banquets. Good Lord, Dick, I can't begin to tell you how I loathe the little squirrel's cage of the careerists. All that solemn twaddle about trifles! Oh, I daresay it's got to be done by somebody, but not by me. If I touched politics I'd join the Labour Party, not because I think then less futile than the others, but because as yet they haven't got such a larder of loaves and fishes."

"I want a job," he declared a little later. "I was meant by Providence to be in a service, and to do work under discipline—not for what it brought me, but because it has to be done. I'm a bad case of the inferiority complex. When I see one of my shepherds at work, or the hands coming out of a factory, I'm ashamed of myself. The all have their niche, and it is something that matters, whereas I am a cumberer of the ground. If I want to work I've got to make the job for myself, and the one motive is personal vanity. I tell you, I'm in very real danger of losing my self–respect."

It was no good arguing with Sandy in this mood, though there were a great many common–sense things I wanted the say. The danger with anyone so high–strung and imaginative as he is that every now and then come periods of self disgust and despondency.

"You're like Ulysses," I told him. "The fellow in Tennyson's poem, you know. Well, there's a widish world before you, and a pretty unsettled one. Ships sail every day to some part of it."

He shook his head.

"That's the rub. As I've told you, I can't grow up. There's a couple of lines by some poet that describes me accurately: 'He is crazed by the spell of far Arabia, It has stolen his mind away.' Far Arabia—that's my trouble. But the Ulysses business won't do for an ageing child of forty. Besides, what about the mariners? Where are the 'free hearts, free foreheads?' We used to have a rather nice little Round Table, Dick, but it is all broken up now and the wood turned into cigar–boxes for wedding present; Peter is dead, and you and Archie are married, and Leithe and Lamancha are happy parts of the machine."

"There's still Blenkiron."

"He doesn't count. He was a wandering star, that joined us and revolved cheerfully with us for a little, and then shot back to where it belonged…You can't alter it by talking, my dear chap. I'm the old buccaneer marooned on a rock, watching his ancient companions passing in ocean liners."

We had reached the top of the hill above Laverlaw and were looking down into the green cup filled with the afternoon sunlight, in which the house seemed as natural a thing is a stone from the hillside. I observed that it was a very pleasant rock to be marooned on. Sandy stared at the scene, and for a moment did not reply.

"I wish I had been born an Englishman," he said at last. "Then I could have lived for that place, and been quite content to grow old in it. But that has never been our way. Our homes were only a jumping–off ground. We loved them gainfully and were always home–sick for them, but we were very little in them. That is the blight on us—we never had my sense of a continuing city, and our families survived only by accident. It's a miracle that I'm the sixteenth Clanroyden…It's not likely that there will be a seventeenth."

III

Left Laverlaw rather anxious about Sandy, and during our time at Machray I thought a good deal about my friend. He was in an odd, jumpy, unpredictable state of mind, and didn't see what was to be the outcome of it. At Machray I had a piece of news which showed his restlessness. Martendale, the newspaper man, came to stay, and was talking about boats, for his chief hobby is yacht–racing.

"What's Arbuthnot up to now?" he asked. "I saw him it Cowes—at least I'm pretty sure it was he. In an odd get–up, even for him."

I said that I had been staying with Sandy in August and that he had never mentioned Cowes, so I thought he must be mistaken. But Martendale was positive. He had been on the Squadron lawn, looking down on the crowd passing below, and he had seen Sandy, and caught his eye. He knew him slightly, but apparently Sandy had not wanted to be recognised and had simply stared at him. Martendale noticed him later, lunching out of a paper bag with the other trippers on the front. He was dressed like a yacht's hand, rather a shabby yacht's hand, and Martendale said that he thought he had a glimpse of him later with some of the crew of the big Argentine steam yacht, the Santa Barbara, which had been at Cowes that year. "The dago does not make an ornamental sailor," said Martendale, "and if it was Arbuthnot, and I am pretty certain it was, he managed to assimilate himself very well to his background. I only picked him out of the bunch by his clean–cut face. Do you happen to know if he speaks Spanish? They were all jabbering that lingo."

"Probably," I said. "He's one of the best linguists alive. But, all the same, I think you were mistaken. I saw him a fortnight later, and, I can tell you, he isn't in the humour for escapades."

In November, when I ran up to London from Fosse for a few days, I got further news of Sandy which really disquieted me. It appeared that he had gone down to the grass countries to hunt—a fact which in itself surprised me, for, though a fine horseman, he had always professed to hate hunting society. But for some reason or other he kept a couple of horses at Birkham and spent a lot of time there. And he seemed to have got mixed up with a rather raffish lot, for since the War the company in the Shires has not been what you might call select. The story told to me was that at a dinner where much champagne was swallowed Sandy had had a drunken row with a young profiteering lout, which had just about come to blows. He seemed to have behaved rather badly at dinner and worse later, for after having made a scene he had bolted, shown the white feather, and refused to take responsibility for what he had done.

Of course I didn't believe a word of it. In the first place, Sandy was as abstemious as a Moslem; in the second place, he had the temper of a seraph and never quarrelled; and, in the third place, he didn't keep any white feathers in his collection. But the story was repeated everywhere and, I am sorry to say, was believed. You see, Sandy had a great reputation in a vague way, but he hadn't the kind of large devoted acquaintance which could be always trusted to give the lie to a slander. And I am bound to say that this story was abominably circumstantial. I had it from an eye–witness, quite a decent fellow whose word it was hard to disbelieve. He described a horrid scene—Sandy, rather drunk and deliberately insulting an ill–tempered oaf in the same condition, and then, when it almost came to fisticuffs, funking the consequences, and slipping off early next morning without a word of explanation.

I hotly denied the whole thing, but my denials did not carry very far. Sandy had disappeared again, and his absence gave gossip its chance. The ordinary story was that he had taken to drink or drugs—most people said drugs.

Even those who believed in him began to talk of a bad break–down, and explained that the kind of life he had led was bound some day to exact its penalty. I tried to get hold of him, but my telegrams to Laverlaw brought the answer that his lordship had gone abroad and left no address for letters.

Three days after Christmas I got the shock of my life. I opened The Times and found on the foreign page a short telegram from New York which reported the death of Mr John Scantlebury Blenkiron on board his yacht at Honolulu. The message said that he had once been well known as a mining engineer, and that at various times he had made coups in Wall Street.

I took the first train to London and interviewed Ellery Willis at the Embassy. He confirmed the news, for he had had a wire from Washington to the same effect.

"What did he die of?" I demanded. "And what was he doing at Honolulu? And in a yacht? He loathed the sea. He used to say that he would as soon take to yachting for pleasure as make his meals off emetics."

"He must have been ill some time," Willis suggested. "That would account for his disappearance. He wanted to be by himself, like a sick animal."

I simply wouldn't credit it, and I asked Willis to wire for details. But none came—only a recapitulation of the bare fact. When a week later I got the American papers my scepticism was a little shaken. For there were obituaries with photographs. The writers enlarged on his business career, but said nothing about his incursions into politics, nor did they give any further news of his illness. I was almost convinced, but not quite. The obituaries were full but not full enough, for Blenkiron had been a big figure and one would have expected the press to go large on his career and personality. But the notices all gave me the impression of having been written to order and deliberately keeping wide of the subject. There was nothing in the way of personal reminiscences, no attempt to describe his character or assess his work. The articles were uncommonly like the colourless recitals you find in a biographic dictionary.

I wired about it to Sandy, and got a reply from his butler that he was still abroad, address unknown. I wished that I knew where to find the niece who had visited Laverlaw in the summer, but Janet Roylance, to whom I applied, could tell me nothing. She and Archie were setting off almost at once on their delayed honeymoon, and had chose South America.

I have one other incident to record before I bring the preliminaries to a close. Palliser–Yeates came to stay with us for a week–end in January, and one night, after Mary had gone to bed, we sat talking in the library. He had never known Blenkiron, but he was a friend of Sandy, and to him I unburdened my anxieties. I thought he listened to me with an odd look on his face.

"You don't believe the stories?" he asked.

"Not one blessed word," I said. "But the poor old chap has managed to get himself a pretty fly–blown reputation."

"Perhaps he wanted to," was the astounding answer.

I stared, and asked him what he meant.

"It's only a guess," he said. "But Sandy has for a long time had a unique reputation. Not with the world at large, but with the people who matter in two hemispheres. He was known to be one of the most formidable men in the world. Now, suppose that he was engaged, or about to be engaged, in some very delicate and dangerous business. He would be marked down from the start by certain, people who feared him. So he might wish to be counted out, to be regarded as no longer formidable, and what better way than of have it generally believed that his nerve had gone and that he was all to pieces? If I wanted to create that impression, I would lay the foundation of it in the Shires, where they make a speciality of scandal. If that was his purpose, he has certainly succeeded. By this time the rumour has gone all over Europe in the circles where his name was known."

I was digesting this startling hypothesis, when Palliser–Yeates told me the following story:

He had been in Paris just before Christmas on some business connected with Argentine banking, and one of his South American colleagues had taken him to dine at a restaurant much in vogue among the rastas. I think it was on the Rive Gauche, not a specially reputable place, but with amazingly good food. The proprietor was from the Argentine, and all the staff were South Americans. Palliser–Yeates noticed one of the waiters, not at his own table but a little way off, and he recognised the man's face. The hair and skin were darkened, but he was positive that it was Sandy—Sandy in a greasy dress suit and a made–up black tie. When the room filled up and got rather noisy, he made an errand to speak to the conductor of the orchestra, and managed to get a word with this waiter. He cannoned against him in one of the doors and said, "Sorry, Sandy."

The waiter knew him perfectly, and whispered from behind his pile of dishes, "Don't give me away, John. It's damnably serious. And never come here again." So Palliser–Yeates took himself off, and had scrupulously held his tongue except for telling me. He said that Sandy looked well enough, and seemed to have mastered his job, for you couldn't detect any difference between him and the rest of the outfit.

When I heard this, I decided to go to Paris myself and have a look at the restaurant, for anxiety about Sandy was coming between me and my sleep. There was something about Palliser–Yeates's story which took my memory back a dozen years to old Kuprasso's dancing–house in Constantinople and the man who had led the Company of the Rosy Hours. Sandy was on the war–path again, and I was bound to keep an eye on him.

But two days later I had a letter—from Blenkiron. It had a typed address and a Southampton postmark—which was no clue, for it had probably been brought over by passenger in a ship and posted at the port of arrival. The handwriting was Blenkiron's unmistakable scrawl. It ran as follows:

"The papers will say I have gotten across the River. Don't let that worry you. But the Golden Shore at present is important and I may have to stay there quite a time. Therefore keep up the requiems and dirges until further notice."

Also at last I got a reply from Sandy, in answer to my string of letters. It was a telegram from London, so he had left Paris, and it merely contained Abraham Lincoln's words: "You stop still and saw wood."

After that I stopped still. Both Blenkiron and Sand were up to some devilry, and I had an instinct that the were working together. I have set down here my slender personal knowledge of the beginning of the strange event now to be related. The rest comes from the actors themselves.

Book I - the Gran Seco

I

The open windows, protected by wire blinds as fine–meshed as gauze, allowed the cool airs from the sea to slip in from the dusk. The big restaurant was in a pleasant gloom broken by patches of candlelight from the few occupied tables. The Hotel de la Constitucion stands on a little promontory above the harbour of Olifa, so the noise of the streets comes to it only like the echo of waves from a breakwater. Archie Roylance, looking into the great square of velvet sky now beginning to be patterned by stars, felt as if he were still at sea.

The Vice–Consul interpreted his thoughts.

"You are surprised at the quiet," he said. "That is only because we dine early. In a little there will be many lights and a jigging band and young people dancing. Yet we have good taste in Olifa and are not garish. If you will be my guest on another occasion, I will take you to a club as well quipped as any in Pall Mall, or to a theatre where you will see better acting than in London, and I will give you a supper afterwards which Voisin's could not better. We have civilisation, you see—for what it is worth."

The Vice–Consul, whose name was Alejandro Gedd, was a small man with a neat, dark, clean–shaven face, and high cheek–bones from which his critics deduced Indian blood.

As a matter of fact they came from another ancestry. His grandfather, Alexander Geddes, had come out in his youth from Dundee as a clerk in a merchant's house, had prospered, married a pretty Olifera, begotten a son, and founded a bank which rose in the silver boom to fortune. That son had married a lady of pure Castilian descent, whose beauty was not equal to her lineage, so the grandson of old Geddes had missed both the vigour of the Scot and the suave comeliness of the Olifera. Don Alejandro was an insignificant little man, and he was growing fat. The father had sold his interest in the bank at a high figure, and had thereafter dabbled in politics and horse–breeding; the son, at his death, had promptly got rid of the stud and left the government of his country to get on without him. He had been sent to an English school, and later to the Sorbonne, and had emerged from his education a dilettante and a cosmopolitan. He professed a stout Olifa patriotism, but his private sentiment was for England, and in confidential moments he would speak of his life as exile. Already he had asked Archie a dozen questions about common friends, and had dwelt like an epicure on the recollections of his last visit—the Park on a May morning, an English garden in midsummer, the Solent in August, the October colouring of Scottish hills.

His dinner–jacket had been made in the vicinity of Hanover Square, and he hoped that his black stock and his black–ribboned eyeglass were, if not English, at any rate European.

Archie was looking at the windows. "Out there is the Pacific," he said, "nothing nearer you than China. What is it like the other way?"

"The coastal plain for a hundred miles. Then the foothills and the valleys where the wine is made. A very pretty light claret, I assure you. Then, for many hundreds of miles, the great mountains."

"Have you travelled there much?"

Don Alejandro shook his head. "I do not travel in this land. What is there to see? In the mountains there are nothing but Indians and wild animals and bleak forests and snow. I am content with this city, where, as I have said, there is civilisation."

"A man I met on the boat told me about a place called the Gran Seco. He said it was bound to be soon the greatest copper area in the world."

Don Alejandro laughed. "That ill–favoured spot becomes famous. Five years ago it was scarcely known. To–day many strangers ask me about it. The name is Indian–Spanish. You must understand that a hundred miles north of this city the coastal plain ends, and the Cordilleras swing round so that there is no room between them and the ocean.

"But at the curve the mountains, though high, are not the great peaks. These are far to the east, and you have for a big space a kind of tableland. That is what we call the Gran Seco—the Great Thirst—for it is mostly waterless and desert. But it is very rich in minerals. For long we have known that, and before the War there were many companies at work there. Now there is one great company, in which our Government has a share, and from which Olifa derives much of its wealth. The capital employed is mostly foreign—no, not American—European, but of what country I do not know. The labourers are the people of the hills, and the managers are Europeans of many nationalities. They pass through this city going and coming—through this hotel often—perhaps we may see some of them to–night. They are strange folk who do not mix freely with us of Olifa. I am told they are growing as wealthy as Rockefeller. There are no English among them, I think—Slavs mostly, with some Italians and now and Then a German, so I do not come across them in the way of business, and it would appear that they have no time for pleasure…May I ask, Sir Archibald, for what purpose especially you honour us with a visit? I want to know how best I can serve you."

Archie wrinkled his brow. "You are very kind, Don Alejandro. The fact is we're here mainly for the fun of it. This is a sort of belated honeymoon trip. Also, I'd like to know something about the politics of Olifa and South America generally. You see, I'm a Member of Parliament, and I've an idea that this part of the globe may soon become rather important. I have brought several introductions."

Don Alejandro waved his hand deprecatingly.

"That will be readily arranged. Your Minister is on leave, and the Embassy has left you in my hands. Without doubt you will be received by our President. I myself will take you to our Minister for External Affairs, who is my second cousin. Our Minister of Finance will expound to you our extravagant prosperity. But of politics in the old sense you will find little. We are too rich and too busy. When we were poor we talked government all the day. And we had revolutions—dictatorships tempered by revolutions. My father more than once saved his neck by the good blood of his racing stable. But now we are very tame and virtuous. Our Government is rich enough to be enlightened, and our people, being also rich, do not trouble their heads about theories. Even the peons on the estancias and the vaqueros in the hills are content. Olifa is—how do you say?—a plutocratic democracy—a liberal plutocracy. Once it was a battered little packet–boat, now it is a great liner careless of weather and tides. It has no problems, the fortunate country."

"Jolly place for a holiday," said Archie. "Well, we mean to have a good look round. What do you advise?"

Don Alejandro became lyrical. "You can go south for eight hundred miles in an ever–widening plain. There you will see such orange groves as the world cannot match, and nearer the mountains the savannahs which are the riche pasture on earth. I will write to my cousin at Veiro, and he will entertain you at the stud farm which was once my father's. It will not be like an English Sunday afternoon in the country, where a fat stud groom with a bunch of carrots takes the guests round the stables. It is a wild place between the knees of the hills, but there is some pretty horseflesh there."

"Can I get up into the mountains?" Archie put in, but Don Alejandro was not to be interrupted.

"You must visit our great cities, for Olifa, though the capital, is not the largest. Cardanio has now four to five hundred thousand souls. That is the port from which of fruits and hides and frozen beef are shipped. And there is Alcorta in the hinterland, which is our little Birmingham. But madame will weary of these commercial glories. She will be happier, I think, among the horses at Veiro, or some pretty hacienda…"

Janet Roylance had paid little heed to the conversation, being engaged in studying the slowly increasing number diners.

"I would like to go into the mountains," she said. "I saw them from far out at sea, and they looked like the battle–tents of Paradise."

"A very savage Paradise you would find it, Lady Roylance. None of your green Swiss valleys with snow–peaks arising from meadows. It is all dusty and bare and cruel. Take my advice and be content with our sunny estancias—"

"Look at these chaps, Janet," said Archie suddenly. "There's a queer class of lad for you!"

Don Alejandro fixed his eyeglass and regarded four men who had taken their seats at a table a little–way off. It was a curious quartet. There was a tall man with hair so pale that at first sight he looked like an albino; he had a stony face and skin like old parchment, but from his bearing it was clear that he was still young. Two were small and dark and Jewish, and the fourth was a short burly fellow, with the prognathous jaw of a negro but the luminous eyes of a Latin. All were dressed in well–cut evening clothes, and each wore in his buttonhole a yellow flower—to Archie it looked like a carnation. The notable things about them were their extreme pallor and their quiet. They sat almost motionless, speaking very little and showing that they were alive by only the tiniest gestures. A waiter brought them caviare, and poured champagne into their glasses, and as they moved their arms to eat and drink they had an odd suggestion of automata.

Don Alejandro dropped his eyeglass. "From the Gran Seco," he said. "That is the type Gran Seco. European, I think—the tall man might be a Swede—going from or returning to their place of work. No. I do not know any one of them. Olifa is full of these birds of passage, who linger only for a day. They do not mix with our society. They are civil and inoffensive, but they keep to themselves. Observe the chic of their clothes, and the yellow button–holes. That is the fashion of the copper magnates."

"They look to me like pretty sick men," said Archie.

"That, too, is their fashion. Those who go to that uncouth place speedily lose their complexions. It may be the copper fumes or some fever of the hills."

"I should rather like to go there," said Archie.

Don Alejandro laughed.

"Ah, you are intrigued. That is like an Englishman. He must be for ever hunting romance. No doubt a visit to the Gran Seco can be accomplished, but it must first be arranged. The railway beyond Santa Ana is not for the public. It is owned by the company, and their permission is necessary to travel on it. Also there must be a permit from the Gobernador of the province, who is also the Company's president, for the workers in the mines are a brutal race and the rule of the Gran Seco must be like the rule of the a country in war–time…If you wish, I will put the matter in train. But I do not think it is quite the place for a lady. Such cheeks as madame's are not for the withering airs of the hills."

"I will follow the Olifero custom," said Janet. "Your ladies, Don Alejandro, are very fond of pearl powder."

The restaurant was filling up. It appeared that many Oliferos were dining, for large lustrous women's eyes looked out of dead–white faces. At the far end of the room, close to the band, a noisy party took their seats at a table. They were all young, and, since they had not troubled to change, their clothes made a startling blotch of colour among the sober black and white of the other guests. All looked as if they had just left a golf–course, the men in knickerbockers of white flannel and both sexes in outrageous jumpers.

"Behold our protectors!" said Don Alejandro with a touch of acid in his tone. "Behold the flower of Yanqui youth! No. I do not know them—for that you must ask my colleague, Senor Wilbur. But I know where they come from. They are from the big Yanqui yacht now in the harbour. It is called the Corinna."

"Good lord! That was Mike Burminster's boat. I didn't know he had sold it." Archie regarded the party with disfavour.

"I do not know who is the present owner, except that he is a Yanqui. The guests I should judge from their appearance to have sprung from Hollywood."

"They were lunching here to–day," said Janet. "I saw them when Archie was inquiring about his lost kit–bag…There was a girl among them that I thought I must have seen before…I don't see her here to–night…I rather like the look of them, Don Alejandro. They are fresh, and jolly, and young."

"Believe me, they will not repay further acquaintance, Lady Roylance." Don Alejandro was unconsciously imitating his Castilian mother. "They come here in opulent yachts and behave as if Olifa were one of their vulgar joy–cities. That is what they call 'having a good time.' Yanqui youth, as I have observed it, is chronically alcoholic and amorous, and its manners are a brilliant copy of the parrot–house."

The three had their coffee in the spacious arcade which adjoined the restaurant. It was Don Alejandro's turn to ask questions, and he became for a little the English exile, seeking eagerly for news—who had married whom, what was thought in London of this and that—till Olifa dropped from him like a mantle and he felt himself once more a European. Presently their retreat was invaded by other diners, the band moved thither from the restaurant, and dancing began in a cleared space. The young Americans had not lingered over their meal, and had soon annexed the dancing–floor. Fragments of shrill badinage and endearments were heard in the pauses of the music.

Don Alejandro advised against liqueurs, and commended what he called the Olifa Tokay, which proved to be a light sweet wine of the colour of sloe–gin. Holding his glass to the corona of light in the centre of the patio, he passed from reminiscence to philosophy.

"You are unfortunate pilgrims," he said. "You come seeking romance and I can only offer the prosaic. No doubt, Sir Archibald, you have been led to believe that we Latin Americans are all desperadoes, and our countries a volcanic territory sputtering with little fires of revolution. You find instead the typical bourgeois republic, as bourgeois as the United States. We do not worry about liberty, for we have learned that wealth is a better and less troublesome thing. In the old days we were always quarrelling with our neighbours, and because we conscripted our youth for our armies there was discontent and presently revolution. Now we are secure, and do not give occasion for discontent."

"Someone told me that you had a pretty effective army."

"We have a very effective police. As for our army, it is good, no doubt, but it is small. For what should we use our army? We have no ambition of conquest, and no enemy against whom we need defence."

"Still, you can't count on perpetual peace, you know. You are rich, and wealth means rivals."

"Have we not the League of Nations?" Don Alejandro cried merrily. "Is not Olifa even now a member of the Council? And is there not the Monroe Doctrine, invented by the great–grandfathers of those depraved children who are dancing yonder?"

"Oh, well, if you like to put it that way—"

"I do not like to put it that way. I do not believe in the League of Nations, and I do not love the United States and I regard the Monroe Doctrine as an insult to my race. But what would you have, my dear Sir Archibald? W have chosen prosperity, and the price we pay for it is our pride. Olifa is a well–nourished body without a soul. Life and property are as safe here as in England, and what more can the heart of man desire? We have a stable Government because our people have lost interest in being governed. Therefore I say, do not propose to study our politics, for there is nothing to study. To you in England with a bankrupt Europe at your door and the poison of Communism trickling into your poverty, politics are life and death. To us, in our sheltered Hesperides, they are only a bad dream of the past. There is no mystery left in Olifa…"

As Don Alejandro spoke, the four men from the Gran Seco were moving through the arcade. They held then selves stiffly, but walked as lightly as cats, deftly steering their way among the tables and at the same time keeping close together. They looked neither to right nor left, but as they passed, Janet and Archie had a good view of their waxen faces. The eyes of all—the pale eyes of the tall man, the beady eyes of the Jews, and the fine eyes of the Latin—had the same look of unnatural composure, as if the exterior world did not exist for them and they were all the time looking inward in a profound absorption. They had something of the eerie detachment of sleepwalkers.

Don Alejandro was talking again.

"Be content, my friends, with what we can offer—our beauty and our civilisation. Think of us as a little enclave of colour between the glooms of the great sea and the clouds of the great mountains. Here man has made a paradise for himself, where during his short day of life he can live happily without questioning."

Archie had been looking at Janet.

"I think we both want to go to the Gran Seco," he said.

II

Archie left Janet writing letters and started oat next morning to explore the city. The first taste of a foreign town was always to him an intoxication, and, in the hot aromatic sunshine of that month which for Olifa is the sweet of the year, the place seemed a riot of coloured and exultant life. He descended the broad terraced road which by easy gradients led from the hotel to the twisted streets of the old city. Some of the calles were only narrow ravines of shade, where between high windowless walls country mule–carts struggled towards the market–place. Others were unhappily provided with screeching electric tramways, so that the passer–by on foot or on a horse had to mount high on the ill–paved side–walk to avoid destruction. Presently he came into a hot market–place, where around an old Spanish fountain were massed stalls laden with glowing flowers and fruit, and strange unwholesome fishes, and coarse pottery, and garish fabrics, and country–woven straw hats. Through his medley Archie limped happily, testing his Spanish on he vendors, or trying with most inadequate knowledge to disentangle the racial mixture. The town Oliferos were a small race, in which he thought there must be considerable negro blood, but the countryfolk were well–made and up–standing, often with a classic and melancholy dignity in their faces. There were lean, wild–looking people, too, whose speech was not any kind of Spanish, with an odd angle to their foreheads and the shyness of an animal in their small anxious eyes, who squatted in their dark ponchos beside their mules and spoke only to each other. An Indian breed, thought Archie—perhaps from the foothills.

A maze of calles took him to the main Plaza, where a great baroque cathedral raised its sculptured front above a medley of beggars and vendors of holy medals. The square was shamefully paved, the facades of the old Spanish houses were often in disrepair, but the crumbling plaster and the blotched paint blended into something beautiful and haunting. Here it was very quiet, as if the city hushed itself in the environs of the house of God. To Archie it seemed that he was looking upon that ancient Olifa, before the hustling modern world was born, Olifa as it had appeared to the eyes of Captain Cook's sailors when they landed, a city which kept the manners and faith of sixteenth–century Spain.

He entered the church, and found a vast, cavernous darkness like the inside of a mountain, candles twinkling like distant glow–worms, echoes of muttered prayers and the heavy sweetness of incense. After it the Plaza seemed as bright as a mountain–top.

Another labyrinth brought him into a different world. The great Avenida de la Paz is a creation of the last twenty years, and runs straight as a ruler from the villas of the most fashionable suburb to the old harbour of the city. In its making it has swallowed up much ancient derelict architecture, and many nests of squalid huts, but, since it was built with a clear purpose by a good architect, it is in itself a splendid thing, in which Olifa takes a fitting pride. Where Archie struck it, it was still residential, the home of the rank and fashion of the city, with the white mass of the Government buildings and the copper dome of the Parliament House rising beyond it. But as he walked westward it gradually changed. Soon it was all huge blocks of flats and shops, with here and there the arrogant palace of a bank or shipping company.

One of these caught Archie's attention. It was an immense square edifice built of the local marble, with a flight of steps running up to doors like those of the Baptistry in Florence. Two sentries with fixed bayonets were on guard, and at first he thought it a Government office. Then his eye caught a modest inscription above the entrance—Administracion de Gran Seco. The name had stuck in his memory from last night's talk—linked with the sight of the four copper magnates and Don Alejandro's aloofness.

The Gran Seco was a strange and comfortless place, and it was perched far up in the mountains. This gorgeous building was at variance with the atmosphere with which the name was invested for him, and he stared with lively curiosity at its magnificence.

Suddenly the great doors opened and a man came out, escorted by two bowing porters. The sentries saluted, a big limousine drew up, and he was borne away. Archie had a glimpse of a tall figure in dark grey clothes, and, what seemed out of keeping with the weather, a bowler hat.

The face was middle–aged and bearded—a trim black beard like a naval officer's. As he passed, the man had glanced at him, and, even in that short second of time, there was something in those eyes which startled him. They seemed so furiously alive. There was nothing inquisitive in them, but they were searching, all–embracing. Archie felt that this was one who missed nothing and forgot nothing; he had had an impression of supreme competence which was as vivid as an electric shock. No wonder the Gran Seco was a success, he thought, if it had men of that quality in its management.